learning Flashcards
what is learning in psychology?
the study of learning concerns the flexibility of our behaviour. humans and animals need to react to changing environment and constantly adapt their behaviour to conditions. learning theory helps us explain how this happens. learning is an adaptive process in which the tendency to perform a particular behavior is changed by experience. as conditions change we learn new behaviour and eliminate old ones.
is learning a theory, law or hypothesis?
theory.
the laws of learning?
the laws of learning, as discovered by learning theorists, may have fallen somewhat short of this grand aim, but these general rules have nonetheless been hugely influential in modern psychology. form underlying assumptions of many more recent psychological theories. apply across many species, not specific to humans. useful, can be applied in many contexts in which behaviour change is desirable.
categories of learning?
habituation: single stimulus, classical conditioning (pavlovian conditioning): stimulus-stimulus, operant conditioning (instrumental conditioning): response stimulus.
single stimulus?
if we learn not to respond to an unimportant event that occurs repeatedly, this is referred to as habituation. for example: sudden, unexpected noises tend to cause an orienting response. if the same sound occurs repeatedly, we soon learn to ignore it (and may even fail to notice it).
classical conditioning?
ivan pavlov - pavlov realised that the dogs’ learned responses were worthy of study in their own right. he believed that behaviour was reflexive, and that learned behaviours (as well as innate ones) could be explained in these terms. learned behaviours were simply “conditional reflexes” (or conditioned reflexes, as they are now more commonly termed). pavlov suspected that the dogs detected patterns in their environment such that they learned that certain stimuli were predictive of others. pavlov proposed that unlearned responses (such as salivation in response to the food) were unconditioned reflexes, a product of the organism’s biology. conditioned reflexes, in contrast, were acquired through learning (conditional on the experience of the individual).
j.b watson and behaviourism?
john b. watson (1878- 1958) was an american psychologist who was heavily influenced by the work of pavlov. he is widely regarded as the founding father of the behaviourist movement in psychology.
operant conditioning?
habituation and classical conditioning both involve learning about external stimuli. in contrast, operant conditioning (or instrumental conditioning) involves learning about relationships between our own responses and their consequences. thorndike (1874-1949) was curious about anecdotes of animal intelligence and set out to study animal learning in a systematic way.
thorndike’s law of effect?
thorndike examined the learning curves of animals in his puzzle boxes. he found no evidence of “insightful” learning. instead, he proposed that the tendency to produce ineffective responses weakened over time, whereas effective responses were strengthened. there was no reason to believe that the animals were aware of the connection – it was formed automatically. skinner: skinner, like thorndike, studied how responses became strengthened or weakened, dependent on positive or negative consequences, terming these instrumental responses operants. he designed an experimental chamber (the “skinner box”) in which responses could be automatically recorded and reinforced.
categories of operant conditioning?
through learning, behaviours may become associated with either appetitive (pleasant) stimuli, or aversive (unpleasant) stimuli. the behaviour may be reliably followed by the stimulus, or it may cause the stimulus to terminate. these factors determine whether the behaviour increases or decreases in frequency. positive reinforcement. increase in frequency of a response that is regularly and reliably followed by an appetitive (pleasant) stimulus. negative. increase in frequency of a response that is regularly and reliably followed by termination of an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus. the behaviour of thorndike’s cats was probably reinforced by a combination of positive (food) and negative (escape from confinement) reinforcement.
punishment?
decrease in frequency of a response that is regularly and reliably followed by an aversive (unpleasant) stimulus. skinner (along with many other learning theorists) was sceptical about whether punishment worked.
punishment, response cost and extinction?
a decrease in frequency of a response that is regularly and reliably followed by termination of an appetitive (pleasant) stimulus is also sometimes referred to as punishment. it may also be referred to as response cost. extinction is a similar phenomenon as this will occur when a behaviour is no longer associated with a pleasant stimulus.
extinction?
if there is no contingency between the behaviour and any appetitive stimulus, then the behaviour will tend to extinguish. delayed presentation – a delay between CS and US makes the CS predictive: this produces strong conditioning. simultaneous presentation is in this case the CS is not predictive of the US which results in little conditioning. backward presentation is if the US appears before the CS during training, the CS has no predictive value, and no conditioning occurs.
trace presentation?
if there is a gap between presentations of the CS and presentations of the US during training, the length of the gap will be related to the strength of response and speed of acquisition: larger gaps mean less predictive CSs.
timing?
as with classical conditioning, timing is crucial for the animal to pick up on the contingency. but this time, the contingency is between response and reinforcer, so it is important for the reinforcer to rapidly follow the response.
